Financial potential of migrants’ capital in Ukraine

In today’s globalized world, labor migration is an important source of remittances and other transfers of migrants to their homeland, which expands the country’s capacity for the development of the national economy and financial markets in particular. Due to the transformational changes in the domestic economy in the 1990th many citizens became migrant workers and their remittances now exceed foreign direct investment in the country. Until 2013 remittances in Ukraine were mainly coming through the banking system, but recently the dominant role is being played by international payment systems, as well as quite a significant amount is incoming by informal channels. In order to increase the role of formal financial market infrastructure in providing capital inflows of migrants first of all the cost of transfer must be reduced.Unfortunately, the capital of Ukrainian migrant workers is directed primarily at the consumer market, real estate market, as well as the shadow economy. The investment focus has actually only investments in real estate and private business (own entrepreneurship). Migrant workers invest in those areas of the economy that are the least compliant to investment and bank lending standards. At the same time, migrants almost do not use capital to purchase shares and bonds, but use it actively to invest in such financial market tool as deposits. Regardless of significant efforts by the Government of Ukraine to attract funds in the state budget by selling different variations of bonds a notable success in modern conditions was not achieved. Nowadays remittances have enabled us to soften financial instability, balance of payments deficit; to strengthen the exchange rate of the national currency and they also have the positive impact on international credit ratings of Ukraine. However, the effectiveness of government policy to direct remittances into investment is very low, and it actualizes the search of effective tools to realize financial capital potential for the development of the national economy. Solving the problem of efficient use of migrants’ capital requires reforms of the tax area, government financial policy, regulation of entrepreneurship etc. Creating relevant socio-economic and legal conditions in Ukraine will allow us to direct the potential of migrants’ capital at the domestic financial market and the development of the national economy in terms of transformation and globalization